I do get anxious (shock) wondering if I am going to be consistent with weekly blogs but then I think to myself, I’m consistently awkward so, how hard can it be? Ha! Hello, three days late.

So now we’ve got the awkward beginning out of the way, we can feel more at ease. The hard part is over, right?.....right?!!!

Ah I wish that were true!...but while we are on the subject of beginnings, I think it is a good place to get the awkward ball rolling. 

I don’t know if anyone else feels this way but there’s something so cringe worthy that makes me want to recoil about having to introduce myself or announce myself. Whether it's to a room of people or a singular person. Having to say my name or even worse my full fucking name, feels so alien to me. I don’t even know if this is going to make any sense when I say this but, sometimes I don’t feel like a real person. My brain forgets how to signal to my mouth to speak and I can become a stuttering, fumbling idiot who cannot seem to pronounce her own name. 

And the thing is, it isn’t even that I don’t want to speak to people…I mean sometimes it is. I actually love having really deep, thought provoking conversations. When I don’t, that is largely due to a low capacity within my social battery. I’ll talk more about that at another time. 

I would take a guess to say that most awkward people are also slightly maybe a teeny bit anti-social too. We’re like, what’s the opposite of a social butterfly…I don’t know, an anti-social toad. No one wants to touch us ‘cause, the slime. 

And fun fact, (we’ll use the word ‘fun’ loosely here) toads are mostly solitary year round, apart from breeding season.  

This is why awkward people don’t make sense.

We want connection (we’re humans, we're all wired for connection) but we also want to be left the fuck alone sometimes. Mostly, I think it’s to do with being seen (for me at least, not sure about the rest of you lovely awkward bunch). I worry so much about appearing to be a semi-normal person that I probably tend to come across even more awkward than I actually am. 

Buttttt…… being seen in our awkwardness is kind of the whole point, though it can be hard to keep that in the forefront of your mind when you're too busy wondering why your name sounded so weird coming out of your mouth. 

Then there’s having to introduce other people to each other. That is a hell of its own. I can’t explain how excruciating it is. It’s not about not wanting to do it but everything to do with panicking about getting it wrong. My brain seems to short-circuit and I struggle to get the right names in the right places. 

Or, OK, you’ve introduced them, now fucking what?!!! Just stood there like a fucking lampost waiting for someone else to say something, anything. 

I’ve recently introduced someone and it was to a very small group of some of my closest people. That was fine. No sweat. Easy peasy.

 Put that into a party setting and it's a different kettle of fish entirely…

(while we’re on this why the fuck are there fish in a kettle? …ohhh… moving on). 

What ended up happening was: I made three introductions, panicked and stopped. And then at the end of the evening as people were leaving they introduced themselves.

To the very important person, actually. 

Which somehow makes it all worse.   

That is something I would love to get better at. You know, introducing people without completely short-circuiting...because I honestly don’t want a sequel to that disaster and I’m still cringing about it now. (Holding onto embarrassment is something else I’ll talk about). 

And you can bet your ass if I spot a fellow toad totally croaking out, I will willingly outcroak you so you don’t feel so alone.

But for now, I’m going to make an Irish exit. Johnny 5 is alive!